But meanwhile in the yard drops of rain fell as evenly and gloomily as if by means of them darkness and grief were distilled through all nature. Kamionka slept long and lightly, but all at once he woke with a certain wonderful impression that something uncommon was happening in the studio. The morning dawn was in the world. The marbles and plasters of Paris began to grow white. The broad Venetian window opposite his bed was penetrated more and more with pale light. In this light Kamionka saw a figure sitting at his bedside. He opened his eyes widely and looked at the figure: it was that of a sister of charity. She was sitting motionless, turned slightly toward the window, with her head inclined. Her hands were laid on her knees,--and she seemed to be praying. The sick man could not see her face, but he saw plainly her white head-dress and the dark outline of her rather frail shoulders. His heart began to beat somewhat nervously, and these questions flew through his head,-- "When could the servant have brought in this sister of charity; and how did she enter?" Next he thought that perhaps something seemed to him thus because he was weak, then he closed his eyes. But after a while he opened them again. The sister of charity was sitting on the same spot, motionless as if sunk in prayer. A wonderful feeling composed of fear and delight began to raise the hair on the head of the sick man. Something attracted his eyes with incomprehensible power to that figure. It seemed to him that he had seen it somewhere, but where and when he could not remember. An irresistible desire to see her face seized him, but the white head-dress concealed it. Kamionka, without knowing why, did not dare to speak or to move, or hardly to breathe. He felt only that the sensation of fear and delight was possessing him more and more powerfully, and he asked with astonishment, "What is this?" Meanwhile there was perfect day. And what a marvellous morning that must be outside! Suddenly without any transition there came into the studio a light as powerful, bright, and joyous as if it were springtime and May. Waves of golden glitter, rising like a flood, began to fill the room, to overflow it so mightily that the marbles were drowned and dissolved in that brightness; the walls were covered with it and then disappeared altogether. Kamionka found himself as it were in some bright space without boundary. Then he noticed that the covering on the head of the sister began to lose its white stiffness, that it trembled at the edges, melted, dissolved like clear mist, and changed into light. The sister turned her face slowly toward the sick man, and then the deserted sufferer saw in the bright aureole the well-known hundred times beloved features of his dead wife. He sprang from the bed, and from his breast came a cry, in which all his years of sorrow, tears, suffering, and despair were united,-- "Zosia! Zosia!"